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Dirt After Dark: The Queen of Sheba

This month, Amber drags Anna back to Arabia, where we discuss possibly its most famous inhabitant of all time: the Queen of Sheba. We look at the source material and the archaeology before really getting into it to discuss racism, misogyny, camels, and cringe archaeologists.

1 Kings 10: The Queen of Sheba Visits Solomon

2 Chronicles 9: The Queen of Sheba Visits Solomon

The kingdoms of ancient South Arabia (British Museum)

In search of the real Queen of Sheba” (National Geographic)

Camel bones challenge the timing of some Bible stories (PRI)

How black women were whitewashed by art (BBC Culture)

Queen of Sheba's gold found by archaeologists (PRI)

The Queen of Sheba’s Hairy Legs (Beautiful in Theory)

Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam

Bilquis, Queen Of Sheba, And American Gods (The Fandomentals)

The Complex Legacy of America's Lawrence of Arabia (Smithsonian)

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The Dirt Podcast

Archaeology, Anthropology, and our shared human past.

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The Dirt Podcast

As science communicators in anthropology and archaeology, we hosts of The Dirt acknowledge that we hold a position of considerable privilege and opportunity, and commit ourselves to continuous learning, unlearning and reflection. We recognize that our disciplines, as well as our own lives, are rooted in and propped up by settler colonialism, white supremacy, and dispossession.

We now reside on the stolen ancestral territory of the Shawnee and Haudenosaunee and on the lands of the Muscogee and Cherokee Nations, but over its lifetime, The Dirt has also been produced on the unceded traditional territory of the Piscataway Conoy and Cedarville Band of Piscataway Indians, as well as that of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, Patwin and Miwok peoples and all those dispossessed by Cession 296. We offer our show as a platform for Indigenous scholarship, history, and cultural expression, through citation and conversation, and we welcome the opportunity to host and compensate Indigenous scholars of archaeology and anthropology as interview guests.

Likewise, we encourage all listeners who reside in settler-colonial states to learn about on whose land they reside, their place in the ongoing process of colonization, and how to contribute materially to reparations and Indigenous sovereignty.